May 2015

05/22/2015

For the past little while I've found my energy flagging, my sleep broken, and things just a bit darker than they should really appear. Yesterday O and G gently, unknowingly flicked a switch in me just by being who they are.

O was excited to go to the dentist to get his front tooth yanked out (the one that, according to biased family lore, was fractured when Craig lowered his rump onto a then-two-year-old O's head, which was resting innocently on the bathtub rim). He happily endured the needle, freezing, and pliers and thrilled in the bloody gap yielded by the process; he was infinitely older and wiser and now had the day off.

We went on a nature walk. He took me to Westboro Beach where we looked for ... anything ... and led me to secret places among treacherous bushes, checking with me always when I cried out in pain when stabbed by thorns. "Are you okay, mom? Is it a bad one?"

His spirit grew still more generous on the way home when we passed by a 60s-ish woman kneeling in the garden, working away at weeds. "I like your flexibility!" he called, and the look of surprise and delight on her face (plus the huge laugh) was pretty brilliant.

At home, things got a bit more subdued when I begged him to do some writing practice, since he is just not very concerned with legibility. I tensed up, waiting for a struggle, but he took out a piece of paper and a pen and I busied myself around the kitchen. After ten minutes or so, he handed me this:

Which reads: "Why my mom is the bust mom because shy reads me Harry Poter to put me to bead and other wies she's just a good mom. Love Oliver To Mom."

So of course I cried.

Then Georgie came home and told me I smelled like rainbow-chocolate-candy. A great start, but then things took a turn when I asked her to stop watching a show on the iPad and she threw her plate across the island onto the floor. This startled even her, so I didn't actually get mad (keep in mind her brother had had the day off, which she was more than aware of) but insisted on a little quiet time upstairs.

Upstairs, we moved back into rainbow territory. We snuggled into my bed and Georgia proceeded to kiss everything on me she could: my hair, my eyebrows, my ears, etc. And giggling all the time. She talked to me about the various affronts of her school day—who was "teasy," who was her friend, who was mean, how she hated the tacos for lunch—and I could feel the tension releasing from her body with every kiss and rant.

We went downstairs. I cooked dinner. It was incredible: chickpeas, spinach, tomatoes, onions cooked in mountains of wine, butter, and garlic. O looked up at me after a few pained bites and launched into his rejection: "Mom, I appreciate that you worked so hard to make this dinner but ..." George was a little more forceful. "NOOOOOOOO! I won't! It's disgustin'! (Cue crying, then hysteria, some more "quiet" time upstairs, and eventually, yes, cold Kraft dinner from yesterday.)